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Varyan Odine
"While you were missing" After finding Psyscape while wandering the Astral Plane, you end up meeting a psychic named Jack Sinclair. He seemed to radiate a feeling of peace and compassion coming from him, and as you swapped tales on the current situation, he struck you as a very good listener. Since you're low on personal funds, Jack lets you stay at his place. He keeps a modest apartment in the city, not too far from the Psychic Academy where he teaches. He eventually gives you a tour of the major highlights of the city, but since it's well over 100 square km in size, a full tour takes a fair bit of time. You are shown the Halls of Government, in the center of town, where the offices of the various elected officials are held. It's a pretty impressive building, about 4 city blocks in size, 3 floors, with a greek style architecture with white marble. You're shown the city gardens, as well as an ultra modern building complex known as the Consulate, where most extradimensional visitors and dignitaries reside. He also shows you a building that looks like a hybrid between a medieval castle and an oriental palace, with all the latest modern amenities included. He tells you that this is the Psi-Warrior Headquarters, and that with the present situation only invitees are allowed in there. He also shows you some of his favorite restaurants, libraries, and shops, but the end of his tour is at the Psychic Academy, which has it's own impressive library and research programs. Over the intervening months, you build a strong relationship with Jack, and he teaches you a wide variety of things. The 'present situation' he referred to on the tour turns out to be preparations for war, as Psyscape has discovered that one of the ancient evils it has battled before has returned. The Cult of the Harvesters has returned to earth, and these evil beings plan to gather power to summon Nxla, the Harvester of Souls to the earth. Nxla is a particularily evil alien intelligence that drains the souls of it's victims. Legends say that those souls are slowly devoured over centuries, and exist in unending horror until the final consumption. Left behind is the soulless body, called a Xombie, so the heroes of Psyscape are sending out reconnaissance missions to hunt down these Harvesters to make sure they can't summon their fell master to the Earth. Your obvious concerns are returning to your friends and allies as soon as possible, and although Jack explains that you can just walk outside the main gates back to Earth, after hearing your tale he encourages you to stay and wait for a mage he knows who can send you back with a rift. Since you entered through a rift into the Astral Plane, Jack figures that you might be phased out of time with the rest of the Earth, since the passage of time on the Astral Plane is known to be inconsistant at best. Psyscape bridges the Astral and Material planes, so he fears that if you leave, you'll snap back in sync with the flow of time, and be stranded in North America. Specifically, in what you would know to be Ohio. Taking a rift back to where you left, he figures, will allow your timestream to sync back to shortly after you left, while putting you in close proximitiy to your friends. You're inclined to trust his opinion, although his reasonings go beyond what you've learned about psychic phenomenon. In the meantime, while waiting for his mage friend, you take the opportunity to learn more about psychic powers and broaden your knowledge of the legends associated with it. However, while waiting you do hear a few unusual rumours and tidbits about the surrounding countryside. What you end up piecing together is that there's a kingdom of mages, called Tolkeen, that believes that the study of magic is not evil, and can help humans to fight against the evils of this land. Unfortunately, most the humans in North America seem to be under the influence of the Coalition States, and you're able to confirm that the racist assholes you encountered not long after your trip to Madagascar are not particularily unique. There's also a lot of tension between Tolkeen and the CS, since the Prozek family basically assumes that all D-Bees and magic users are either evil or misguided. An interesting tidbit you hear, is a new treatment for Juicers that's being tested out. It's called the Prometheus Treatment, and the CS has been doing trials with a view to releasing it soon. It's a treatment that's supposed to extend the relatively short lifespan of a Juicer, by some accounts up to a century or more. Rumours say that the effects might even be permanent, leading to Juicers having an immortality treatment. People are gathering at Newtown, where the CS is supposed to be issuing the first stage of the treatment, a computer chip implant that temporarily counteracts teh Juicer side effects. While wandering through a library in the Academy, you stumble across an ancient book full of legends and tales about a clan of immortal people, who can only be killed by severing their head. Despite the obvious age of the book, the full history of these people is still nothing more than legends. Tales of some shining white city whose people were scattered to the four winds are the most substantiated origin, but even those tales are nothing more than legend to the author. You arrange for a copy to be made, and take it with you. During your time living at Jack's place, you notice that his friendliness begins to grow, first into affection, and then into something more. You get the distinct feeling that as time passes, he falls in love with you. Although he never pushes the issue, he does flirt from time to time, and occasionally hints at the possibility of more. When the rift is finally opened back to Germany, he seems sad that you have to go, although he understands you have friends you need to help. He gives you a parting hug, and whispers in your ear "Pay attention to your dreams, there's a lot more truth to be had in dreams than most people realise". "Tracking John" You noticed the code hidden in the history of the immortals that you had read, but it took you some time to decipher it. It wasn't an incredibly difficult code, more a time consuming one. You get the impression that it wasn't meant to stop people from finding the information, just to delay them, a feeling that is substantiated at the end of the text. Once you've deciphered the entire text, you notice that there are three separate parts to it. The first tells a story of two brothers who set out to learn everything, and together build a shining white city, with the most splendid white towers, their shining spires visible for miles. This city became a center of learning, and they ruled over it benevolently for centuries, learning more about the world around them and sharing it with others who came to learn. The White City became a beacon to all immortals, a place where knowledge could be shared with all, and the crest of the Raven was known as a sign of peace. Ages passed, and a subtle evil invaded The White City, secretly tainting those within, and manipulating immortals for it's own gain. The brothers did not see this evil, until it was far too late. The evil possessed the younger brother, and turned him against his elder brother, wresting control of The White City away. The elder, caught off guard by this unexpected attack, was barred from his own home, and forced to flee. He gathered allies, and in time brought a siege to The White City, and a bloody war was fought, staining the city red with blood, and cracking the towers with the power that was unleashed in the battle. The elder brother reached his sibling in the council chambers, and their duel shook the very heavens. Eventually, the younger lost, and the elder disappeared into myth. All that remained of The White City was the darkness, and it's chief lieutenant, Talapyr Fasil. The second part appears to be John's commentary on this story. He claims to have found the tale during a brief visit to an interdimensional library he ran across during his early attempts to return home, in a tome that Atlantean scholars considered to be an ancient legend, and even then this tale was considered to be more myth than truth. The White City, as he called it since it was never named, was assumed to have never existed. At first he discounted the tale, until his search for home led him to South America. Here, he details a brief encounter with an Entity that led him to an immortal who identified himself as Talapyr. John fought him briefly, but barely escaped with his life, and fled the continent soon afterward. John speculates that this immortal may have been the same one mentioned in the tale, and idly wonders if the crest mentions has any bearing on his family name. The third and final part of the code was much harder to decipher, mainly because it appeared to be written in a hurry, and several errors appear to have been made encoding the message. Your best guess as to the proper message indicates that John did something to ruin Talapyr's plans in South America, and earned the anger of Talapyr's master, Bob. The last line of the code is "I fear that I can no longer protect this tale myself, so I send it away in the hopes that the right eyes may see, and take heed." Summary of information - Varyan has found a history of immortals, a tale Atlantean scholars considered an ancient legend, detailing two brothers founding The White City, with the younger eventually dying and the elder disappearing as The White City was taken by darkness and ruled by it's chief lieutenant, Talapyr Fasil. John's commentary was included in code, speculating that an immortal he encountered named Talapyr was the same lieutenant from the legend. He also mentioned Bob was Talapyr's master, and he had somehow angered this Bob. Varyan found records of someone named Earl Winston, and followed the trail to Talapyr, where she fought and killed him (with assistance from her mortal allies). While exploring his hideout, she found Talapyr sitting inside, apparently unharmed, and decided to get out of dodge. The party has previously encountered a place called The Four Winds Bar, and has learned that it's a place where needs can be met. While there, a strange map was found behind the clock, which seemed to have some points marked, and these marked points would change over time. Lately, the map hasn't updated. Varyan was doing further research and investigation into these oddities, and discovered that someone named Carrie would have more answers for her, but has so far been unable to locate any information as to her whereabouts, or even more than a name. Until... Our tale resumes - Slamming the latest data screen down on the table, you sigh with frustration. Once again, no leads. John must have known about your immortality, but he's been gone for years. (Edit: not 100% sure if your character met John, I think so, but I think it was brief) Doricha, gone now too, the loss still raw. And now to know that her daughter, Morgan, is lost somewhere in the universe, and all the answers to where immortals come from and why they must fight so tantalizingly near, and yet so far away. Scattering the piles of screens away as you push back from the table, you catch sight of an exerpt from an old song, back from Earth before the coming of the rifts that made this strange new world and brought magic to humanity, back before the Global Civil War of your childhood. This song caught your eye initially, when you tried to look up those strange people you met in Germany who called themselves the People of the South Wind, and you found a reference to an old song by Kerry Livgren with the same title. You don't know why you'd recognize a snippet of that song here while looking for unrelated information, or even how you have a record of it open. Assuming your subconscious was at work while you were digging through the records, you read the snippet again to see why it caught your eye. "Now we've traveled all across the oceans/And we've seen what there is to see/But I guess it's not the proper solution/Cause it's all about the same to me. Now I look back and it makes me wonder/Why we just couldn't see/All of the battles we fought and won there/And I wish that I could be with the People of the South Wind/I want to see 'em again/It's where we used to be free/And that's the place for me". Odd, you think, there doesn't seem to be anything special here. And then you spot it, down at the bottom of a fragmented record on ancient 20th century music, an error in the attribution line. "Songwriters: Carrie" Except it's not a digital error, preserved for centuries in some ancient archive. This record is a scanned document that was damaged, but it was at one point a physical document, produced during the golden age of humanity, when those sort of errors would have been fantastically rare. Whatever else came after that first name is indecipherable due to the damage, but it's clear as day that someone intended Carrie, not Kerry, as the songwriter's name. You're startled when you hear a faint chime. It repeats once, and slowly fades away. Rummaging around your belongings to find the source, you pull out your map, and notice the focus has shifted from South America to Europe, and a new marker pulses gently. You recognize the area as being a couple hundred kilometers north of Mussig, probably about 30 km north of where you left the refugees from that nuclear strike that destroyed Mussig. You don't even need to see the name on the marker, after all it's where you last saw them, but you look anyway. "People of the South Wind?"